


Soul of Soho

by lyricwritesprose



Series: Myth-taken [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Attempted Suicide, Depression, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, POV Outsider, Queer Guardian Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), References to Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22218538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: People say there's a Saint of Soho.  Someone who looks out for the people who fall through the cracks.  This is the story of one young man's encounter, and what he made of it.
Series: Myth-taken [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559953
Comments: 79
Kudos: 742
Collections: The Queerest Place in Soho





	Soul of Soho

**Author's Note:**

> Please mind the tag warnings. There is a suicide attempt in this story.

Me? Yes, I believe in the Saint of Soho. I believe he can do things. And I believe he’s been here for a long time. Maybe a very long time.

Because I think I met him, that’s why.

This was back in the nineties. I was living in a shitty flat with Liam, who was my boyfriend back then and not my husband. We went through regular periods when he would break up with me to “save” me, because of religion and family and other bullshit. In retrospect, it’s a miracle that we stayed together long enough to sort things out. But then, it’s a miracle that he’s alive. His mental health wasn’t so good, back then.

It was spring, and he was in a bad way. We’d fought over all sorts of things—we’d fought over breaking up, we’d fought over me being bi, we’d fought over whether making rice with chicken soup makes it taste anywhere near decent. He was feeling horrible, and I knew that, but I couldn’t jolt him out of it, not with yelling, not with tenderness, not with anything. And then Liam went and locked himself in the bathroom.

I would have thought he was just in a snit. Except, when I tried to talk to him through the door, he told me that I should call the police to open the door and not try to get it open myself. An awful lot of, “It’s better this way.” So I knew what he was thinking. I didn’t know if he was going to go through with it. Wasn’t going to stick around to find out.

Outside, it was—you know those nights that make you think you’re in a Dickens novel, with fog as thick as paint? It was like that. It had just gone evening, and the street lights all looked smeared.

I ran outside, and I just started asking people on the street if they knew how to open locked doors. Not much of a plan, I knew it wasn’t much of a plan, but if I went to the police I knew Liam would get hurt.

People were shying away from me, and then I ran into—

I do mean almost  _ ran into _ him. I hadn’t seen him in the fog. I thought at the time it was mostly because of the clothing he was wearing. Dark clothes show up in that sort of smeary, sodium vapor light. Pale clothes, not so much.

He told me to slow down, asked if I was all right, and I didn’t answer him for a moment because I was fighting this feeling that maybe I  _ was _ in a novel. Because he looked like he had stepped out of the past, with his waistcoat and overcoat and gold pocket watch. I remember his hair was white enough that the street lights made it seem almost luminous. For a moment, nothing quite felt real around me.

He said, “Are you all right?” again.

I said, “I think my friend is committing suicide, I  _ need _ to find someone who can get through a locked bathroom door, I’m sorry, I have to go  _ now,” _ and I tried to dodge around him.

Didn’t work. He got in front of me again and asked me for the address.

I gave it to him. This was the last person in the world you would think could pick locks, but—I don’t know. There was just something about how he asked.

And then there was a moment—I don’t know how to explain it, exactly, it was more of that unreal feeling, like I was living in a dream or a book, and then I realized that I had just been standing there, and I was wasting time, and I  _ needed _ to either find someone who could help Liam or get back to the flat to talk him out of it, so I ran back to the flat.

Didn't really think about where the man had gone. Not until later.

I got to the flat, and there was Liam, standing in the middle of the room, looking shaken. I hugged him, and I told him not to be a stupid idiot ever again because he had frightened me, and I told him I would stick by him whatever happened, and he said, “Did he come past you?”

I asked him what he was talking about.

He took a deep breath, and told me what had happened. He said that he hadn’t just thought about it. A little while after I left, he opened up the package of spare razor blades, and he took one, and he slashed his wrist—it hurt like hell, anyone who tells you that it doesn’t is smoking something—trying to get deep, trying to get the veins. And then he transferred the razor to the other hand, and cut into that one, but here’s the thing. By the time he had finished cutting on his right arm, the cuts on his left wrist—weren’t there anymore.

And then the cuts on his right wrist weren’t there.

He tried two more times, to see if it would keep happening, and it kept happening. It didn’t even leave any marks. The first time he tried it, he somehow  _ didn’t notice _ when the cuts closed up, so he did it again, and kept staring at them, glaring at them, trying to force them to either do their thing or give up and not do it, and then a voice right outside the door said, “What’s your name?” and his head jerked up to look at the door, and by the time he realized his mistake and looked back down, the cut was gone again.

He said later that he didn’t remember all of what he said to the voice. Told him to stop it. Told him there was no reason for him to live. Vomited out a whole epic of self-loathing, an ocean of it. Talked about saving me.

He didn’t remember all of what the voice said to him, either. Just that it was a quiet, gentle, precise sort of voice, all Received Pronunciation like the person had stepped out of a BBC drama, and that he talked about other people who had fought this same battle. Back in the eighties, when Soho was wracked by the plague of AIDS and nobody was entirely sure how virulent it was and some people thought that being gay was a death sentence in itself. Back in the sixties, before Stonewall, when you could be locked away faster than blinking for so much as touching another man. Back in the eighteen eighties, when men met in clubs and took on women’s names as aliases so that they couldn’t betray each other’s secret. The man made it sound like he’d been there, like he’d known these people, like he’d watched them pull themselves back together and get back up and try again. He never made it sound like it was easy, getting back up, just that Liam wasn't alone in it.

Liam remembers leaning up against the door, sobbing that he wasn’t strong enough. The voice said, “You don’t have to be strong enough on your own.” And it seemed to be true, because the voice stayed—while Liam cried, while he shouted, while he wrung all the emotions out of himself and found himself limp, even the poisonous cloud of loathing drifting away, to the point where he thought,  _ oh, might as well live a little longer, what can it hurt? _

He said, “All right, I’m coming out,” and opened the door.

The flat was empty.

That’s when I came back in.

There are a number of things that neither of us can account for. Like the fact that Liam talked for  _ hours, _ or what felt like hours, leaning against the door and envisioning a solid, real person on the other side. Or the fact that I didn’t meet anyone on the stairs, and the elevator hadn’t worked for two months. Or the cuts vanishing. The cuts vanishing is the big one. Liam says that he was in a hell of an emotional state, and he  _ could _ have hallucinated quite a lot of things, but I’m not so sure.

I think of the way the man seemed to materialize out of the fog. And how he looked, like he came from the nineteenth century.

I think of the other stories floating around Soho, and the common elements. White hair. Waistcoat. Looks like a man out of his time.

I think that maybe, back in the nineteenth century, someone died. He was gay, and he was a gentleman, well-dressed and meticulously well-spoken. Probably a bad death. Police, maybe. Something bad enough to stop him from resting peacefully.

Except that I don’t think this is an ordinary rattle-the-chains haunting, because there’s a  _ point _ to it. Find people like him, and help them. We’ve all heard about the gay bashers who collapsed into tears on top of their victim, or disappeared. We’ve all heard about the runaway who finds a thousand pounds in his pocket. I think the more we tell the stories, the more the stories seep into the bones of the streets, the more he can hear you, and maybe help you. I don’t think he’s the Saint of Soho. I think he’s the  _ Soul _ of Soho.

And yes, maybe if you go case by case, there’s a plausible explanation. Liam  _ could _ have hallucinated. The gay bashers could have had a change of heart. Some ordinary person could have given the thousand pounds.

Me, though? I believe.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that, more than miracles, tragedies are averted by people being there to listen when others are at their lowest point. Wikipedia has a list of suicide crisis lines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines). If you know of any that aren't listed on there, drop me a note in the comments and I'll list it in this note. Take care of yourselves, guys.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] Soul of Soho, by lyricwritesprose](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23439595) by [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig)




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